This man has seven sex dolls – and he's 'raising' them like his kids

“I don’t use my dolls for the purpose of sex. They’re like my daughters.”

In the Ryan Gosling comedy Lars And The Real Girl the male lead “falls in love” with a life-size doll.

And it appears something quite similar has happened in China -- except the man in question has seven dolls. And he treats them like his kids.

“A man in China has eight children, but only one is real,” British tabloid the Metro reports.

Chen (58) bought his first doll in 2004 to help him cope with his loneliness, after he’d left his wife because of her gambling addiction.

“They’re like my daughters,” he says. “I don’t use my dolls for the purpose of sex. I groom and dress them. And take them on holidays and make music videos for them.”

Each doll costs at least R19 000. His first doll’s name was Xiao Xue, which means Little Snow. He bought her in 2004, when he’s wife had left and his son, Yang Yang (then 5), was starting school in Guizhou province.

In an interview with Pear Video Chen said: “Sometimes when I drive, I'd put her on the passenger's seat. I would feel like I have got a companion.'

So poor Yang has no option but to squeeze in between the dolls on the back seat. “I don’t care. They’re my sisters,” the boy says.

Recently when Yang turned 18 Chen gave him a silicone girlfriend for his “biological needs”. She doesn’t have a name yet.

The father explains: “I want him to use the doll instead of catching random diseases from outside by accident.

“When I gave him sex education, I taught him the importance of staying safe when it comes to sex.”

And he’s planning to start a business making clothes for the dolls. He’s not perverse, Chen says. “These dolls are beautiful. They are the combinations of the best features taken from various women. I'm simply appreciating their beauty.”

Sarah Valverde of California writes in her masters thesis, The Modern Sex Doll-Owner: A Descriptive Analysis, that the obsession with sex dolls has grown exponentially in the past 10 years.

Psychologists don’t understand the phenomenon much, she found. The psychiatric condition description that comes closest to it is agalmatophillia of statuephillia, a rare sexual attraction to statues. Sarah found no clear evidence that the condition has any harmful effects. It “complements people’s sex lives”.